RRND Email Full Text (Scheduled)

  • Eastern Congo: Ebola Deaths Rise to 131 as Outbreak Spreads

    Source: US News & World Report

    “Twenty-six more suspected Ebola deaths were recorded ⁠in ⁠24 hours in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, authorities said ⁠on Tuesday, and the head of the World Health Organization expressed deep concern about the outbreak’s spread. The new deaths bring to 131 ​the fatalities associated with the outbreak in eastern DRC. There have been 516 suspected cases and 33 confirmed cases in DRC, according to a daily bulletin published by health authorities, and two confirmed ‌cases in neighbouring Uganda. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared ‌the outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo strain of the virus a public health emergency of international concern on Saturday, the first time a WHO chief has done so before convening an emergency ⁠committee.” (05/19/26)

    https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-05-19/ebola-deaths-in-eastern-congo-rise-to-131-as-outbreak-spreads

  • NYC: Federal judge bans ICE arrests at Manhattan immigration courts

    Source: The Guardian [UK]

    “A federal judge in New York has banned US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from arresting immigrants in or around three federal courthouses in lower Manhattan, where vigorous confrontations have played out since the start of Donald Trump’s second presidency. Under an order issued on Monday by P Kevin Castel, a US district judge, federal agents are no longer allowed to make arrests of immigrants except under exceptional circumstances at the sites where hearings are held before immigration judges. Castel’s ruling came in response to a lawsuit brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union, Make the Road NY and other groups.” (05/19/26)

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/19/ice-arrests-ban-manhattan-courts-immigration

  • Spain: Former PM Zapatero faces corruption probe

    Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]

    “Former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is under investigation over alleged influence peddling and related crimes in the bailout of an airline during the COVID-19 pandemic. The High Court said on Tuesday that Zapatero’s office in Madrid was searched along with three other premises. The socialist, who governed Spain from 2004 to 2011, was summoned to testify on June 2. The investigation is tied to the 2021 state rescue of Plus Ultra, which received 53 million euros ($62m) through the state holding company SEPI during the pandemic. The case escalated in late December after several arrests, including businessman Julio Martinez Martinez, known as Julito, who is considered key to understanding the links between Plus Ultra and Zapatero.” (05/19/26)

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/19/spains-former-pm-zapatero-faces-corruption-probe

  • MN: ICE gang member charged in shooting

    Source: South China Morning Post [Hong Kong]

    “Prosecutors in ⁠Minnesota on Monday charged a ⁠US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent with assault in connection with the shooting of a Venezuelan immigrant in Minneapolis in January during US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown ‌in the city. Christian Castro, 53, was charged with four felony counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and a misdemeanour of falsely reporting a crime, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty told a press conference. Castro was the second ⁠federal agent to be charged by Minneapolis officials in connection with Trump’s ‌immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis, during which Venezuelan immigrant Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis was shot in the leg, ‌and two US citizens were [murdered] by federal agents.” (05/19/26)

    https://archive.is/mb5gv

  • Iran: Regime announces new body to manage Strait of Hormuz

    Source: France 24 [French state media]

    “Iran’s top security body announced on Monday the formation of a new body to manage the Strait of Hormuz, which Tehran has effectively closed and wants to charge ships to traverse. On its official X account, the Supreme National Security Council shared a post for the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA) saying it would provide ‘real-time updates on the #Hormuz_Strait operations and latest developments.’ The account of the Revolutionary Guards navy shared the same post. It was not immediately clear what the new body would do but earlier this month Iranian English-speaking broadcaster Press TV said it constituted a ‘system to exercise sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz’ and that ships passing through the strait were sent ‘regulations’ from the email [email protected].” (05/18/26)

    https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20260518-iran-announces-new-body-to-manage-strait-of-hormuz-as-peace-talks-stall

  • US regime sanctions Cuban regime officials

    Source: New York Times

    “The Trump administration on Monday intensified its pressure campaign against Cuba’s government, issuing sanctions on three government agencies and 11 top officials. Those targeted included three generals and communist party officials associated with the Cuban security apparatus. Such sanctions, usually used against accused drug traffickers, human-rights violators and terrorists, freeze any property and bank accounts they may have in the United States. While it is unlikely that any of the Cubans targeted have U.S. assets, the move is an important escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign to force the communist government to overhaul is economic and political system.” [editor’s note: If it has no effect, how is it “important” in “forcing” anything? – TLK] (05/18/26)

    https://archive.is/6muT8


  • Christianity and the Founders’ Liberalism

    Source: Law & Liberty
    by Alexander William Salter

    “If the American founding was radical, it was in the literal sense of the word: proceeding from the root.” (05/19/26)

    https://lawliberty.org/book-review/christianity-and-the-founders-liberalism/

  • The Noble Savage

    Source: Brownstone Institute
    by Sofia Karstens

    “isenhower warned us: ‘Beware the military-industrial complex.’ Those words are widely remembered. Less so the companion warning: ‘Holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.’ That second warning may prove the more prophetic. The convergence of those two forces – the industrial machinery of power and the technological elite capable of shaping reality itself – is where we now find ourselves.” (05/19/26)

    https://brownstone.org/articles/the-noble-savage/

  • Ibn Khaldun and the Original Case Against Big Government

    Source: Students For Liberty
    by Ilia Zhuzhunashvili

    “When the state keeps taking more, it often ends up with less. The idea is usually treated as a modern insight, associated with tax curves, supply and demand, and other economic buzzwords. But Ibn Khaldun, the 14th-century North African historian and thinker, laid out the logic long before any of that language existed.” (05/19/26)

    https://studentsforliberty.org/blog/ibn-khaldun-and-the-original-case-against-big-government/

  • The So-Called “AI Revolution” Will Make Us Less Free

    Source: Libertarian Institute
    by Kym Robinson

    “Social media and our relationship to the digital realm inside our screens has twisted the real world into a filtered and inhuman perception. Influencers and content creators who falsify their image turn humans with imperfections into streamlined products for a cultivated audience, with particular aesthetics and quality they are now accustomed to. In turn, LLMs and these versions of AI all seek to duplicate the human experience or perspective through devious means of humanizing machines. LLM’s are expected to provide prose filled with flowery and grandiose language, its software chatting in a way the human being on the other end feels flattered and ingratiated towards. This cognitive bias can both affirm pre-established beliefs while also satiating the human ego to the point of addiction and dependency.” (05/19/26)

    https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-so-called-ai-revolution-will-make-us-less-free

  • Asymmetric Accountability

    Source: EconLog
    by David Hebert

    “For your decisions, there are three options: you can get the decision right or you can get it wrong. ‘But Dave,’ you say, ‘that’s only two options!’ In the following nuance lies the heart of this piece: there are two ways in which you can be wrong. You can act when you shouldn’t have or you can fail to act when you should have. Getting things right all the time is not possible. So which type of mistake are you more likely to guard against? It depends on which one will get you fired. In most government settings, the answer is biased in particular (and predictable) ways.” (05/19/26)

    https://www.econlib.org/econlog/asymmetric-accountability

  • Why AI Is a Train, Not a Bicycle

    Source: Persuasion
    by Tim Requarth

    “In 1981, a young Steve Jobs — bearded, bespectacled, brown corduroy blazer over an open-collared shirt — sat in front of an Apple II and explained what he thought a personal computer was for. He’d read an article in Scientific American that compared the efficiency of locomotion across species. The condor, he said, came out on top. Humans ranked about a third of the way down, ‘not too proud a showing for the crown of creation.’ But then someone had the insight to test a human on a bicycle, and the cyclist blew the condor away. … The computer, he said, was ‘a 21st century bicycle’ for the mind. In the age of AI, Jobs’ quaint bicycle has received an update from Silicon Valley. With the launch of ChatGPT, gushed Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in early 2023, ‘We went from the bicycle to the steam engine.'” (05/18/26)

    https://www.persuasion.community/p/what-the-inuit-know-and-ai-doesnt

  • The Devil and Tina Peters

    Source: The Bulwark
    by Jonathan V Last

    “On Friday, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis announced that he would commute Tina Peters’s sentence. On the one hand, this is a tiny thing. Inconsequential. If we make it out of this period, then it will hardly be worth a footnote in the history of Trumpism. On the other hand, what Gov. Polis did for Peters is everything. It is the foundational question about how liberalism responds to an illiberal attack. And I’m going to swerve and tell you that I’m not really sure what I think about it. This might seem like an easy call — but it only seems that way.” (05/18/26)

    https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-devil-and-tina-peters

  • More on water

    Source: The Price of Liberty
    by Nathan Barton

    “Environists have a mythology as rich (and wrong) as any other supposed (that is, fake) religion, when it comes to water. These myths are now embedded into school textbooks and media playbooks as much as National Socialism was ever found in schoolbooks of the Third Reich. Here are some of the myths and examples of them …” (05/18/26)

    https://thepriceofliberty.org/2026/05/18/more-on-water/

  • No one can save Trump from himself this time

    Source: AlterNet
    by Lindsay Beyerstein

    “When Donald Trump was about to miss an interest payment for his dying Trump Castle casino in 1990, his father Fred bought nearly $5 million worth of poker chips to save him from default. When Trump was indicted for inciting the January 6 insurrection, the Supreme Court ruled that he could not be charged …. As inflation spikes, gas prices surge, and the world teeters on the brink of a recession, congressional Republicans are demanding a billion dollars to build the gilded ballroom after Trump bulldozed the East Wing of the White House without collecting enough corporate bribes to cover the project. For nearly 80 years, someone has always saved Trump from himself. With the Strait of Hormuz, the president has finally created a mess so big that no one can save him. No one is coming to the rescue. NATO can’t and China won’t.” (05/18/26)

    https://archive.is/xGvYZ

  • Does Poverty Cause Crime — Or Does Crime Cause Poverty?

    Source: Independent Institute
    by Scott Beyer

    “The relationship between poverty and crime has been a longtime policy debate. A common narrative — particularly on the left — is that poverty drives people to crime, positing that those who live in tough neighborhoods have little choice but to survive through lawbreaking. This treats crime as a passive outcome of economic hardship — almost like a disease — rather than a choice. But a deeper look at the data, and differences across communities, suggests the opposite: that crime instead causes poverty. Irrespective of the causation order one accepts, there is certainly a relationship between the two.” (05/18/26)

    https://www.independent.org/article/2026/05/18/does-poverty-cause-crime-or-does-crime-cause-poverty/